How big is the ransomware threat to businesses and organizations worldwide? New research from Trustwave, a Top 200 MSSP, provides clues.
Key findings from the "2020 Trustwave Global Security Report" included:
- Ransomware accounted for 18 percent of all breach incidents in 2019, up from 4 percent in 2018.
- Social engineering was the top method of compromise in 2019; social engineering tactics were used in 50 percent of breach incidents in 2019, up from 33 percent one year earlier.
- Corporate environments (54 percent) led all environments targeted by cybercriminals in 2019, followed by e-commerce (22 percent) and cloud services (20 percent).
- Retail (24 percent) was the most-targeted industry by cybercriminals in 2019, followed by the financial (14 percent) and hospitality (13 percent) sectors.
- The Asia- Pacific region (37 percent) ranked first in the number of data compromises investigated last year, followed by North America (33 percent) and the Middle East and Africa (25 percent).
Comparatively, the report indicated that organizations have made cybersecurity improvements in several areas, including:
- The volume of spam email hitting organizations declined from 45 percent in 2018 to 28 percent in 2019.
- Of all spam analyzed in 2019 by Trustwave, 0.2 percent contained malware, down from 6 percent in 2018.
- The median time duration from threat intrusion to detection when detected internally was two days in 2019, down from 11 days one year earlier.
Cybercriminals are using novel malware delivery, inventive social engineering and other malicious behaviors to disguise their cyberattacks, Trustwave CEO Arthur Wong said. Meanwhile, organizations require security services to quickly detect and eliminate evolving cyber threats.
MSSPs can help organizations combat cyberattacks. By partnering with MSSPs, organizations can identify security gaps and deploy services to address these gaps now and in the future.
